Ok, so I used to have one of these,(another one), that I used the menu to remove the menu and it became a clean stick with no label.

This one was given to me by my daughter, and although it appears clean, it still has the SanDisk name when ejecting it.

I want to use this as a boot stick, but it does not work on a simple enviroment. IE, I am trying to use a .BIOS file to repair a damaged bios on an Emachine/Intel D865GVHZ board. When I run parted from UBCD, or any utilty that can accsess the USB, it fails. Plus, it won't work as a bootable stick as an option.

I saw an article here on how to amend the iso image and include the bios flash but I am not going to ask how to do that....yet

I just want to know how in the world I can clean this stick, lol. Sandisk has a utility that removes the software on thier website, that didn't work. I downloaded a low level-format utilty, that didn't do it either.

The second was a lowlevel format tool called HDDGURU LLF Tool. shareware, and it works for HDD and usb sticks. It cleans and formats, but even after a reboot or two, it still shows up in USB devices as Sandisk cruzer, which means to me, that there is still writing on it somewhere.

Its not using Dos 8.3 names, and this is what I believe is the problem when looking at it under freedos.

Also, have used disk management and found the same to be true, after format it still is listed as Sandisk USB Device as I stop the power to it.

I don't really understand what is really that you are trying to delete. I mean, your final goal is to update some BIOS, right?

What I mean is that the specific label is not that important (except for certain specific cases). Then you may have some MBR and partition(s), although under Windows this might be uncommon for normal uses. Then you would have the information itself. In certain cases, you might be able to access to some firmware of the UFD (which usually we don't touch).

What you might be seeing as "still sandisk" might be in the firmware, or in the second label (the one Windows usually won't touch). For you to delete the second label, one possibility would be to use UBCD FreeDOS and use the "label" command. But wait...

There are some tools (running under Windows) that may help you achieve your actual final goal, instead of dealing with the intermediate steps (deleting whatever).

Among those available tools, I would suggest trying a relatively new one called Rufus at http://rufus.akeo.ie. It should be simple enough for your goal (boot your UFD into FreeDOS and update some BIOS).

There are many more tools and methods I could suggest. If Rufus doesn't work for you, just let me know and I'll point you to other alternatives.

In any case, it would be useful for all if you could report back whichever the result you have, or if you have any doubt about this. And as I said, if that method is not good for you, I'll point you to some other alternative.

I will look into this Ady, and I certainly will report back on the results.

Also to try to exlpain as much as i can/know about/understand why I am so adamant about removing the part of the MBR of the stick.

That makes sense, that it is in the MBR, some kind of label, thats why it wont erase in low level format, but because it won't boot, was really the question I was trying to address, along with using a BIOS."bin" file to rebuild a damaged bios that has a bad checksum.

According to Intel, booting to a usb, or floppy, with the bin file, should rebuild a damaged bios, but with the file on the stick, it does not access the stick on boot, and when accessing it with UBCD through one of the programs, it says the stick is corrupted.

I figured that was becuase the stick was using long file names and UBCD uses dos 8.3 file names?

Where was the long file name? After I formatted it? must be in MBR like you said.

I know I am asking to mess with the archetecture of the MBR, and that might make ther stick useless if done wrong, no worries...

I will look into your recommendations, do some more reading, and update you with the results

So here is an update while I wait for Rufus to format my USB with Freedos support. I checked scan for bad sectors so maybe that is why it is taking so long, but I was wanting to know, plus maybe like the old scandisk utility, it would somehow mark them as unusable if it found them.

After I read your post I decided to fix my stick so it is bootable, so I did a search on google and came up with HPs utility, and after I had tried copying the raw {BIO} file to the stick, and booting the old PC and waiting for it to recover/rebuild the bios,(Waited 30 mins) I decided to make it bootable again.

When I put it in this PC, after using HP and making it bootable, it booted, but when put in the Intel machine, it listed the disk as an option,(SanDisk), but when it booted had no operating system.

So here I am with rufus now. Had an issue, will fill you in later. The program looks awesome though..

Ok the issue was that rufus said the cluster size was invalid. Figured this out when I formatted at Fat32, and then it finished ok. Put it in machine and it boots to dos off the USB.

Followed the advice given at Intel and got the file for the BIOs. [ XXXXX IB.exe] from the website, put it in a directory and expanded it all, and copied IFlash and the .BIOS files to the bootable USB. When I ran the iflash/file as suggested, it came up with an error listed like a memory issue, XXXX.FFFF.HHHH.and so on, for example.

This bios come up when I am in configure and normal mode, all the items are there and configurable, but the checksum fails and it will not boot.

Tried putting the whole file from intel on the stick, and expanding it, which also overwrote the autoexec.bat file. Ran Iflash/XXX.bio and came back with the same error," Invalid Opcode at 0017 0000 0212 FFF5 5E22 0022 5E01 F522 80FF"

The stick still boots though

I did a google search on Invalid Opcode and I see it might have something to do with freedos, I will let you chew on that a little bit. There are no passwords on the bios, and it comes up with an Intel spash screen on boot, but this was an Emachine and they don't offer bios support, and it used to have an Emachine splashscreen. Just throwing it out there, maybe a cmos/bios wipe is in order? When the bios accually boots up and just has a chksum error, i didn't want to push that option, plus thought it might make it worse, or would be killing a fly with a sledgehammer

I used to update flashroms with a machine and a flash rom is a flashrom, although they can go bad, a checksum error is ussually bad programming.

The name "SanDisk" you see may be some label, somewhere. It might be part of the firmware, or part of the MBR / PBR information, or even somewhere else (but the "somewhere else" possibility is probably already deleted by now). If the program to update the BIOS or the system itself won't request from you to use a specific "label", then don't worry about it.

FYI, Rufus is a simpler replacement of the HP utility, and it should work better than the old HP utility.

About the invalid opcode, I'll need to refresh my memory about it. If you say it is related to FreeDOS, then try using the MS-DOS version of Rufus.

To be clear, I have not read the info from Intel about how to update this specific BIOS. It might need a specific method, or system files. The problems might come from a bad old BIOS (or bad previous update), or the new one not being appropriate for this system, or bad RAM, or bad / old CMOS battery, or...

If you are interested about alternative tools (instead of Rufus), let me know, and please keep updating us with feedback.

I forgot to mention one more issue. DOS may not be too nice with FAT32.

So, you might be better formatting with FAT16 and using 8.3 file names. OTOH, the problem with FAT16 is that many Windows - based tools for UFD just expect FAT32 and won't work correctly (or not at all) with FAT16.

Is FAT32 giving you any problem? Have you tried formatting with FAT16 instead (and using Rufus with this filesystem)?

In addition, do you still have "invalid opcode" messages?

Now, I'm not sure if this is related to your case:

Quote:

This is how I flashed it to the Intel BIOS, and what Intel BIOS file I used. Let me start off my saying you can not use the Express or Iflash method to flash your OEM board to the Intel BIOS, or back to your OEM BIOS. When you try to flash the normal way it will refuse to flash due to a system check that verifies the BIOS String Vendor ID, along with Board ID against the BIOS you are flashing with. Now the Vendor ID for eMachines is 15A which is Gateways vendor ID, Intel's is 86A.

So the lastest, of what has become the, why can't i flash this drive? ,issue.

I downloaded the tool that is on UBCD, BIOS, and put that on the flash drive, ran the tests, identified the bios, and it all checked out, plus I had the name of the bios manufacterer..AMI 0100.

So I went to AMIs website, and downloaded there identification tool, which point out the board manu facturer, and ran it on this PC. It identified that it was a dell board and bios, which was correct.

So then I ran it on the Emachine/intel machine, and it did the same thing, except it says it is an intel bios...it told me the board correctly and gave me the bios name and date also. It wasn't supposed to run in dos, but it did the same thing on this pc, which is XP

Now I am going to search the bios sites, and educate myself on this as much as I can. Emachines charges $19.99 for 15 mins of advice, but I am afraid they will probably tell me to get a new PC, lol. The site that handles dells bios issues, is biosagent plus. They sent me a bios update and it is the same one as the EXE one I downloaded and ran from Intel, and froze the machine. (The same files and procedures under a different name EXE, nice looking Icon though..)

When I asked them for support, all they could do was send me an exe, and thats it, some support. Thier answer was,"we don't do custom bios work anymore" I read between the lines, and it meant, "They payed the company to run an activeX prog on your PC, and fired all the techs who know what to do, now we are a database pointer" Of course the program will not run under dos anyway, but I did try with the bootstick formatted with dos.

So for you hardware people who are following this, the bios chip is wave soldered in, and even though my soldering skills are awesome, there is slim chance I would be able to replace it if it were bad, and all the tests say it isn't, at least the ones from the bios program,(BTW, I ran the program with the stick formatted with MSDOS, that dang OPCODE error) The writing on the CHIP? SMSC in bold type..LPC47M172-NR..00444-A9562...8H119057A..American megatrends 1994. Pardon me while I search google with that info...

Found a data sheet and a article about motherboard glue, but it is not clear whether this is a term or it is glued onto the MB. The data sheet was interesting..I will look into this also..

I used the prog in BIOS to wipe out the data on the chip, but it was not like wiping an EEPROM, and it still came up with checksum error. It still only boots when the battery is unplugged from the board..and then it reports the checksum error, and asks to go into setup to set time...

See I know that there is a problem, probably the flash utility aggravated it, but I still haven't given up yet. To much checks out as the chip isn't burnt completly. Maybe the Bios forums will have an answer. Even if I was able to replace the chip, I would have a hard time finding one, and the datasheets list 1993. The search engines for chips turned up nada.

So the only hope is that I don't have the right bios file, utility, tool to correct this issue...yeah I have a new PC, which will smoke this one, but I am going to look into this further, as a side project..

Any comments on this saga, are welcome and appreciated..More when I have it

Is FAT32 giving you any problem? Have you tried formatting with FAT16 instead (and using Rufus with this filesystem)?

In addition, do you still have "invalid opcode" messages?

Now, I'm not sure if this is related to your case:

Quote:

This is how I flashed it to the Intel BIOS, and what Intel BIOS file I used. Let me start off my saying you can not use the Express or Iflash method to flash your OEM board to the Intel BIOS, or back to your OEM BIOS. When you try to flash the normal way it will refuse to flash due to a system check that verifies the BIOS String Vendor ID, along with Board ID against the BIOS you are flashing with. Now the Vendor ID for eMachines is 15A which is Gateways vendor ID, Intel's is 86A.

Not fat32 is not giving me problems. I am using rufus to make the 4GIG USB bootable with the MSDOS option, because I was having problems with all the progs I ran at the prompt coming back with Opcode error.

When I originally tried to format with plain FAT,(16?), it errored out as wrong cluster size. There was no choice of cluster size under FAT.Maybe cuz its 4 Gig? When I formatted at fat32, and used freedos for the bootable part, that was when I had the opcode error. So I ended up formatting bootable with fat 32 with MSDOS.

My bios string is..BF86510A.86A 0077, and the original express flash was from Intel.. Under additional info in the bios, System information claims to be an Emachine as the manufacterer, product name T4010, serial number XDF55 100 11979... Desktop board information in the bios says Manufacterer Intel corp..Product D865GVHZ..version AAC93540-101..Ser # BTHZ51716667

Now with the automatic exe update it has changed. The string is BF86510A.86A.0077 which is intel, and the splash screen I get is intels

The problem started with the exe bios flash program I got from Intel, because Emachine doesn't support them,(wonder if gateway does?)

So why doesnt iflash work if the bios string identifier is for Intel?

I have a floppy drive, and I am going to find some disks that I can set up with the main BIO file as suggested. I read that on the Intel site, but during boot, it didnt see the flash drive, or read the cdrom with the recovery BIO file. I thought it read the CD rom, it lit up, and the machine shut off, but it still was a black screen at boot, unless I pulled the battery.

The article had a lot of good information, and also it suggested tips for booting, that I will try also, after he did a recovery with the jumper off.

Somewhere in this chip, Emachine still has a deathgrip on the PC and the bios.....

Hurrah!! I followed the advice on the link and disabled the onboard Lan, and on reboot I can see it all!

Thank you guys very much, next I will swap all the stuff back from this Dell Dimension 4800 and will be back on tommorow to update. What would I do without the shoulders to stand upon you have provided?

Not fat32 is not giving me problems. I am using rufus to make the 4GIG USB bootable with the MSDOS option, because I was having problems with all the progs I ran at the prompt coming back with Opcode error.

When I originally tried to format with plain FAT,(16?), it errored out as wrong cluster size. There was no choice of cluster size under FAT.Maybe cuz its 4 Gig? When I formatted at fat32, and used freedos for the bootable part, that was when I had the opcode error. So I ended up formatting bootable with fat 32 with MSDOS.

How did you perform those first format attempts (when you received the "wrong cluster" message)? Was it using some DOS format tool, Windows Explorer (right click -> format), Windows cmd (format.exe), or Rufus (or other)?

I was using the rufus tool, and I did the format with the FAt option, not Fat32, and the cluster size was set and not an option. This is when I got the error something like,"Wrong cluster size, format will not continue"

This happened with freedos as the boot sector, and I did not test it with MSDOS.

So when I started to use a program after booting it up, thats when the OPcode error showed up. Did the format again at fat32 and the defualt cluster size, (It is changeable with fat32),but this time with MSDOS for the bootable software. Then the Opcode error did not happen.

So I spent the remainder of the night taking my HDDs and other hardware outta the Dell and putting the Emachine/Intel back together. I spent some time this morning looking over a wiring problem in someones car, and the time I needed to get this machine up and running. changes are,(taken from CPU Z before and after shots)

Old machine before the new processor and bios upgrade__________________________________________

_________________Still have some tweaking, and the board will let me overclock the processor, which I will causiously look into, becuase it is running at 200 FSB, and is rated for 800. This is way under the ratio with the celeron.

Something ocurred to me..The original exe flash update did its job, the one I dwlded from intel, which explains the bios identifer change from Emachine/gateway, to Intel.

All I had to do was follow the instructions of that post you gave me, and disable the onboard lan, and my screen would no longer be black. Even if I did manage to Iflash the bios with the Intel prog, I would still have the same problem, and I might have given up.

So back to the software tweaking because I just hot swapped the HDDs back in this PC. Thanks again and let me know if you need anything. What would I have done without you?

I was using the rufus tool, and I did the format with the FAt option, not Fat32, and the cluster size was set and not an option. This is when I got the error something like,"Wrong cluster size, format will not continue"

This happened with freedos as the boot sector, and I did not test it with MSDOS.

So when I started to use a program after booting it up, thats when the OPcode error showed up. Did the format again at fat32 and the defualt cluster size, (It is changeable with fat32),but this time with MSDOS for the bootable software. Then the Opcode error did not happen.

Well, in fact, there are 2 issues with that (not that it is still important to your goal ). One is that the "normal" ("usual") FAT16 supports around 2GB partitions. To support 4GB partitions, FAT16 needs a cluster size that is considered an "extra" (big). So many tools won't support it. A workaround is to partition the UFD and set the second partition as "hidden".

The "Invalid Opcode" is another issue (already seen here in the forum more than once), related more to some FreeDOS boot in certain machines.

Coincidentally, a new FreeDOS kernel was just released a few days ago, and Rufus is still being developed, so the issue may also depend on which exact version of the FreeDOS kernel Rufus is using.

Quote:

So back to the software tweaking because I just hot swapped the HDDs back in this PC. Thanks again and let me know if you need anything. What would I have done without you?

I'm not the developer of Rufus, nor of any of the alternative tools, nor the author of that page with the adequate help, so you should take the credit for being able to actually perform all this, and the respective developers too.

Well I had to re-install XP, then all the updates..then the software...I Heard Windows 7 is the new 98 SE, or the new XP,(sorta), but this 'ol PC will have to do with XP, lol.

I can take credit for sticking with it, but like all good technicians, we must give credit to whose shoulders we stood on. I can repair whatever was built, but unlike Edison, I ussually give up when it comes to a point, but I DO hate to give up.

If it were not for your link to the emachine tweakers forum, I would have no idea that the update was successful, but there was a problem and conflict in the onboard lan setting that screwed up the video. How he figeured that out, God knows, but he gets that credit also.

This board, namely you, was addressed because it was the best source for information on formatting a USB stick to run a dos operated utility off of it to update the bios, and the Opcode error was found on the board also. I still didn't get the Iflash utility to run correctly even though I formatted the stick with the MSDOS bootable format, but that could probably be fixed, if I had installed more DOS on it also. It booted, and that was all I asked for. It wasn't because the bios identifier was emachine/gateway's.

My freind wanted me to chuck this old machine but until I get some hardware, the new HP xw4600 will not be up. I am going to look into speeding up the FSB on this PC, read some forums, and ask inteligent questions, (maybe), I will update you all on my success.

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